1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a printing apparatus and operation setting method thereof. Particularly, the present invention relates to a printing apparatus capable of functional enhancement by adding a card or board and an operation setting method thereof.
2. Description of the Related Art
As a high-speed serial interface, a PCI-Express® interface, which is a succeeding specification of the PCI bus system, has been proposed (see, for example, United States Patent Application Publication Nos. 2006/0114918, 2006/0277344, and 2005/0172037). A PCI-Express serial bus has an advantage of reducing the hardware cost because the number of signals is smaller than that in a PCI parallel bus. For example, the number of wires (signal lines) on a board can be reduced, and the substrate area and connector size can be decreased. PCI-Express can simultaneously provide a bandwidth twice or more that of the PCI and thus can meet demands for higher speed and higher performance. Since PCI-Express employs point to point connection, extension of the system configuration is implemented by performing port extension by a switch and transferring packets.
FIG. 12 is a block diagram exemplifying a data transfer system using PCI-Express. This system includes a CPU 800, a root-complex 801, a RAM 802, a switch 804, and two end-point devices 806 and 807.
The root-complex 801 is the top layer of the PCI-Express hierarchy. The root-complex 801 connects the CPU 800 and RAM 802, and is connected to the end-point devices 806 and 807 via the switch 804. The root-complex 801 includes a GMCH (Graphic Memory Controller Hub) in a computer system.
PCI-Express defines a hot plug as a basic specification. A specification between an add-in card and a motherboard is defined as a card electromechanical specification (generally called a CEM specification). A signal pin is assigned to a connector for implementing a hot plug.
The CEM specification is premised on that the add-in card serves as an end-point and the motherboard serves as a root-complex. If the add-in card serves as a root-complex, a connection fails. Setting the motherboard as an end-point can cope with a case in which the add-in card serves as a root-complex. However, the connection fails when the add-in card serves as an end-point.
For example, when the printer controller of an inkjet printing apparatus uses a board which employs the PCI-Express specification, and the motherboard is defined as a root-complex, only an add-in card set as an end-point can be connected. When the motherboard is set as an end-point, only an add-in card set as a root-complex can be connected.
In this way, the connectable relationship between the system board (motherboard) and the add-in card does not have a high degree of freedom. Flexibility is poor in functional enhancement and the like of the inkjet printing apparatus.